One-ton satellite to crash land on Earth this weekend

GOCE is expected to crash land to Earth on Sunday - maybe Monday [ESA]

The 1,100kg piece of equipment is spiralling towards Earth after it ran out of fuel last month and it is expected to hit the planet on Sunday or Monday.

It is currently around 170km away from the surface but when it gets to 50 miles from Earth it will begin to break apart and burn, scientists say.

The GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite is currently dropping at a rate of more than 4km a day.

Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) believes the satellite has already fallen around 100 miles and will continue to drop because of Earth's gravitational pull.

GOCE ran out of fuel this month [ESA]

“At present we can not say where the re-entry is going to happen...”

Professor Heiner Klinkrad from the ESA

Professor Heiner Klinkrad from the ESA said: "At present we can not say where the re-entry is going to happen except that it is not going to happen north of the 85 northern latitude or south of 85 southern latitude.

"We are in contact with national civil protection agencies throughout Europe, of ESA member states, so they get all the information we have on the re-entry prediction and that also includes information on emergencies in case parts of the satellite fall on inhabited areas."

Scientists believe 200kg of the mass will hit Earth at some point in dozens of fragments.

The rest is expected to burn away as it falls through the atmosphere.

Experts have stopped people from worrying though as they say you are 250,000 times more likely to win the lottery than get hit by a piece of the satellite.

The ESA says GOCE have also gathered sound waves from the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated Japan in 2011, making the satellite the first ever seismometer in orbit.